The Black Unicorn (29 page)

“Why do you run so, High Lord Ben Holiday?” Dirk asked quietly.

“I must find Willow,” he replied.

“Why must you find her?” Dirk pressed.

“Because danger threatens her,” he answered.

“And is that all?”

He paused. “Because she needs me.”

“And is that all?”

“Because there is no one else.”

“And is that all?”

“Because …”

But the words he searched for would not come, as elusive as the sylph herself. There were words to be spoken, he sensed. What were those words?

“You work so hard to orchestrate your life,” Dirk declared almost sadly. “You work so hard to fit all the pieces together, a vast puzzle you must master. But you
fail to understand the reason for your need to do so. Life is not simply form, High Lord; life is feeling, too.”

“I feel,” he said.

“You govern,” Dirk corrected. “You govern your kingdom, your subjects, your work, and your life. You organize—here as you once organized there. You command. You command as King as you commanded as lawyer. Court-of-law stagecraft or royal-court politics—you are no different now than you were then. You act and you react with quickness and skill. But you do not feel.”

“I try.”

“The heart of the magic lies in feeling, High Lord. Life is born of feeling, and the magic is born of life. How can you understand either life or magic if you do not feel? You search for Willow, but how can you recognize her when you fail to understand what she is? You search with your eyes for something they cannot see. You search with your senses and your body for what they cannot find. You must search instead with your heart. Try now. Try, and tell me what you see.”

He did, but there was a darkness all about him that would not let him see. He drew deep inside himself and found passages through which he could not travel. Obstructions blocked his way, shapeless things that lacked clear definition. He tried furiously to push past them, groping, reaching …

Then Willow was before him, a misty vision suddenly remembered. She was lithe and quicksilver as she passed, her face stunning in its beauty, her body a whisper of his need. Forest green hair tumbled down about her slender shoulders and fell to her waist. White silk draped and clung like a second skin. Her eyes met his, and he found his breath drawn from him with a sharpness that hurt. She smiled, warm and tender, and her whisper was soundless in his mind. There was no danger that threatened her, no sense of urgency about her. She was at peace with herself. She was at rest.

“Why do you run so, High Lord Ben Holiday?” Dirk repeated from somewhere within the shadows.

“I must find Willow,” he answered again.

“Why must you find her?”

“Because …”

Again, he could not find the words. The shadows began to tighten. Willow began to fade back into them.

“Because …”

She faded further, a memory disappearing. He struggled frantically to find the words he needed to say, but they eluded him still. The sense of urgency returned, quick and hard. The danger to the sylph became real once more, as if somehow resurrected by his indecision. He tried to reach out to her with his hands, but she was too far away, and he was too rooted in place.

“Because …”

The shadows were all about, cloaking him now in their blackness, smothering him in their endless dark. He was drawing back out of himself. Dirk was gone. Willow was little more than a patch of light and color against the black, fading, fading …

“Because …”

Willow!

He came awake with a start, jerking upright from his place of rest, his underarms and back damp with sweat. Night shrouded the eastern wastelands in silence. Clouds masked the skies, though the rain had ceased to fall. Ben’s companions slept undisturbed all about him—all except Bunion. Bunion was already gone, his search for Willow begun.

Ben took a deep breath to steady himself. His dream of Willow was still sharp and certain in his mind. He exhaled.

“Because … I love her,” he finished.

Those were the words he had searched for. And he knew with frightening certainty that the words were true.

He was awake for a time after that, alone with his thoughts
in the dark silence of the night. After a while, though, he tired and dropped back off to sleep. When he awoke again, it was nearing dawn, the eastern sky behind the valley rim brightening with faint streaks of gray and gold. Bunion had not returned. The others still slept.

He rolled over on his back, glanced about the storm-dampened campsite, and then blinked in surprise. Edgewood Dirk rested comfortably on a thick bough of the fir just a few feet above his head, paws tucked under his sleek body, eyes squinched closed against the light.

The eyes slipped open as Ben stared. “Good morning, High Lord,” the cat offered.

Ben pushed himself up on his elbows. “Good morning, nothing. Where have you been?”

“Oh, here and there.”

“More there than here, it seems!” Ben snapped, a great deal of pent-up anger coming quickly to the fore. “I could have used a little help back there in the Deep Fell when you so conveniently disappeared! I was lucky the witch didn’t do away with me on the spot! And then I was dragged off to Strabo’s den and offered to him as a snack! But all that made precious little difference to you, did it? Thanks for nothing!”

“You are quite welcome,” Dirk replied calmly. “I would remind you once again, however, that I signed on as a companion, not as a protector. Besides, it appears you have suffered no harm in my absence.”

“But I might have, damn it!” Ben couldn’t help himself. He was sick of the cat appearing and disappearing like some wraith. “I might have been fried in dragon oil for all the good you’d have done me!”

“Might have, could have, may have, should have—the haves and the have nots reduced to pointless possibilities.” Dirk yawned. “You would do better to forget flogging dead horses and try rounding up a few live ones.”

Ben glared. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you have something more important on your mind than chastising me for imagined wrongs.”

Ben paused, remembering suddenly his dream, the search he had undertaken, the golden bridle, the black unicorn, Meeks, and all the rest of the puzzle he still didn’t understand. Ah, and Willow! Thoughts of the sylph pushed all others aside. I love her, he told himself, trying the words on for size. He found them unexpectedly comfortable.

“There are those who theorize that our dreams are simply manifestations of our subconscious thoughts and desires,” Dirk mused, as if delivering an offhand dissertation. “Dreams do not often portray accurately the events upon which those thoughts and desires are formed, but they do demonstrate quite vividly the emotions behind them. We find ourselves involved in bizarre situations and disjointed events, and our tendency is often to dismiss the dream out-of-hand—a self-conscious response. But hidden within the thrashings of our subconscious is a kernel of truth about ourselves that needs to be understood—truth that sometimes we have refused to recognize while awake and now demands recognition while we sleep.”

He paused for dramatic effect. “Love is sometimes such a truth.”

Ben pushed himself upright, stared at this cat turned philosopher a moment, and then shook his head. “Is all this in reference to Willow?” he asked.

Dirk blinked. “Of course, sometimes dreams lie and the truth can be found only in waking.”

“Like with my dream of Miles?” Ben found the cat’s conversation needlessly convoluted. “Why don’t you just say what you mean for once?”

Dirk blinked again. “Because I am a cat.”

“Oh. Sure.” The standard answer again.

“Because some things you simply have to figure out for yourself.”

“Right.”

“Something you have not proven very adept at doing, I’m afraid.”

“Certainly not.”

“Despite my continuing efforts.”

“Hmmmmm.” Ben experienced an almost uncontrollable urge to throttle the beast. To suppress the feeling, he glanced about instead at his still sleeping companions. “Why isn’t anyone but me awake yet?” he demanded.

Dirk glanced about with him. “Perhaps they are simply very tired,” the cat suggested amiably.

Ben gave him a hard look. “What did you do—employ a bit of magic? Fairy magic? As Questor did with me? You did, didn’t you?”

“A bit.”

“But why? I mean, why bother?”

Dirk rose, stretched, and jumped down next to Ben, pointedly ignoring him. He began to wash himself and continued to do so until he had cleaned himself thoroughly, fur carefully ruffled and smoothed back in place again.

Then he faced Ben, emerald eyes gleaming in the faint dawn light. “The problem is, you do not listen. I tell you everything you need to know, but you do not seem to hear any of it. It really is distressing.” He sighed deeply. “I let your companions sleep to demonstrate to you one final lesson about dreams. So much of your understanding of what has happened depends on your understanding of how dreams work. Watch, now, what occurs when your friends awake. And try to pay attention this time, will you? My patience wears exceedingly thin.”

Ben grimaced. Edgewood Dirk settled back on his haunches. Together they waited for something to happen. After a moment, Questor Thews stirred, then Abernathy, and finally the gnomes. One by one, they blinked the sleep from their eyes and sat up.

Then they saw Ben, and more especially, Dirk.

“Ah, good morning, High Lord. Good morning, Dirk,”
Questor greeted brightly. “Slept well the both of you, I hope?”

Abernathy muttered something about all cats being night creatures and not needing sleep anyway, even prism cats, and how it was a waste of time to worry about any of them.

Fillip and Sot eyed Dirk as they would a long-awaited dinner and showed not the slightest trace of fear.

Ben stared in bewilderment, the conversation continuing on about him as if the cat’s presence were perfectly normal. No one seemed surprised that the cat was there. Questor and Abernathy were behaving as if his appearance was entirely expected. The gnomes were behaving the way they had at their first encounter with Dirk; neither seemed to remember what their eagerness to make Dirk a meal had cost them.

Ben listened a moment as the others talked and bustled about, then glanced in confusion at the cat. “What …?”

“Their dreams, High Lord,” Dirk whispered, interrupting. “I let them discover me in their dreams. I was real to them there, so I am real to them here. Don’t you see? Truth is sometimes simply what we perceive it to be—in waking or in dreams.”

Ben didn’t see. He had paid close attention, he had listened as instructed, and he still didn’t see. What was the point of all this and what did it have to do with him?

But there was no more time to consider the matter. A shout from Abernathy—or rather a sort of bark—captured the attention of all. The boughs at the edge of the grove of fir parted and who should appear but Parsnip! Bunion had him in tow, both of them soaked through by the storm, both grimacing ear to ear those wicked, toothy grins. Ben froze. Parsnip was supposed to be guarding Willow! Shaking off his paralysis, he hastened forward with Questor and Abernathy to greet the wiry little creatures, stopped short at the hard, suspicious look directed
at him by Parsnip—who, after all, had no idea yet who he was—and finally backed off a step at Questor’s urging. Questor and Bunion conversed briefly back and forth in the rough, guttural language of the kobolds with occasional interjections by Parsnip, and then Questor turned hurriedly to Ben.

“Parsnip has kept watch over Willow since she left Sterling Silver, High Lord—just as you commanded—until yesterday. She dismissed him without reason. When he wouldn’t leave her, she used the fairy magic and slipped away. Even a kobold can’t stay with a sylph when she doesn’t wish it. She has the golden bridle, and … and she searches for the black unicorn.” He shook his owlish features at the look on Ben’s face and tugged worriedly at his white beard. “I know. I don’t understand this last either, High Lord, and neither does Parsnip. Apparently she has decided
not
to take the bridle to you as her dream instructed!”

Ben fought off the sudden lurch in his stomach. What did this mean, he wondered? “Where is she now?” he asked instead.

Questor shook his head. “Her trail leads north into the Melchor.” He hesitated. “Bunion says she appears to be traveling toward Mirwouk!”

Mirwouk? Where the missing books of magic had been hidden? Why would she go there? Ben felt his frustration increase.

“There is more, High Lord,” Abernathy interjected solemnly, ignoring the warning tug on his tunic sleeve from Questor. “Strabo and Nightshade are at hunt—presumably for you, Willow, and the bridle. And a demon—a huge, flying thing, a thing that answers to no one, it seems—is rumored to scour the whole of the valley. Bunion saw it last night.”

“Meeks’ pet,” Ben whispered, remembering suddenly the monster that had appeared at the dance of the River Master’s nymphs and destroyed them. His face tightened.
Edgewood Dirk and the matter of dreams were forgotten. He thought now only of Willow. “We have to reach her before they do,” he announced, his voice sounding hollow in his ears as he fought down the fear that raced through him. “We have to. We’re all she has.”

Everyone reacted. Abernathy barked sharply at the G’home Gnomes and turned the kobolds about once more. Questor put a reassuring hand on Ben’s arm. “We will find her, High Lord. You can depend upon it.”

Quickly they departed into the wastelands, the stranger who was High Lord, the wizard and the scribe, the kobolds and the gnomes.

Edgewood Dirk sat quietly and watched them go.